The Uchiha Chronicle: The Bro Code
by finish line
Summary: Sasuke/Sakura. AU. "LEGEN... wait for it!... DARY!" This is a story where Sasuke mulls on his gullibility, becomes a love guru, and acts as Naruto's wing-man. This is gonna be tough.
1. Sasuke mulls on his gullibility

_**THE UCHIHA CHRONICLE: THE BRO CODE  
**__By finish line_

_xii._

"**Bros don't set up other bros on blind dates."**

Sasuke Uchiha glared at the poor smartphone trapped in his death grip under the table. He ignored the talkative girl who sat across from him and focused all of his precious attention on forcing the smartphone to vibrate and blink and _just freaking cue that someone texted_. Or called. Or _just something to save him from the freaking hellhole. _

He needed reason. He wanted to get away so badly from the humble diner where he was having dinner with an unknown girl whose face was too much caked with makeup. A call from Naruto Uzumaki—_the Idiot_—would even brighten up his night even just by a notch. Of course, he would shower colorful curses upon the Idiot, because had the Idiot not intervened in his life, he would not be in the freaking blind date in the first place.

Sasuke would take all—hell, he would even _give_—just to get away.

"Sasuke, are you all right?" asked the girl. He was so sure that she had introduced herself the moment she appeared in his line of sight, but he held so little interest on the information to even care. "You look... well... you look constipated."

Was he really? Sasuke angled his phone from under the table so he could see his reflection from the dark screen. Surely, he looked constipated, and for a second, he thought he could use the good old "my stomach hurts" statement to get away. On the second thought, he would not want to embarrass himself.

So he did the next thing that came to mind.

"Someone's calling," he mumbled, pointing to his phone. He hastily placed his smartphone against his ears and feigned talking to someone. "Hello."

He was halfway through a sentence, when, surprisingly, his phone _rang._ His eyes snapped toward the girl in front of him—who looked really, really, _really_ insulted—and he didn't know why, but he gulped. He looked at his smartphone and realized that it was an alarm he had set a few hours ago.

Sasuke stared back at the girl and pressed the "Dismiss" button on the alarm. Next thing he knew, ice-cold water was being poured down on him, the cold seeping through his dark shirt and into his rigid body.

If he had just been considering the thought a few moments prior, then _now_ he was certain he would do it. He would kill the certain Naruto Uzumaki who had set him up in the blind date in the first place.

* * *

Sasuke was still not in the mood two hours later as he sat on his bed. He had already changed into a comfortable pair of jeans and a white V-necked shirt and was then leaning his back against the headboard of the bed. He glared at nothing in particular and thought of why he was so unfortunate to have ever met and befriended the Uzumaki.

Don't get him wrong. He appreciated the camaraderie and comfort of being friends with the idiot, but really. Going as far as setting him up on a date was so not right on so many levels.

Sasuke's glare heightened as he remembered how and _why_ he got to befriend Naruto when they were in kindergarten. He thought of how idiotic and mindless his five-year-old self must have been.

_Five-year-old Naruto Uzumaki grinned toothily as he sat on the seat in front of Sasuke. Sasuke was, for the lack of better words, amazed at the drawing of the red circle with green dot on its upper part that Naruto was holding._

"_You want this 'rawing?" asked the blond boy, still grinning from ear to ear._

_Sasuke's jaw was still hanging. "Whoaaa, that a tomato?"_

"_Uh-huh," answered Naruto. He laughed boisterously. "I'm reeeaaallyyy good, 'ayt?"_

_Eyes wide in awe, Sasuke could only nod._

"_You want more tomato 'rawings?" asked Naruto, his wide blue eyes glinting in childish mischief. _

_Sasuke blinked and thought that "Hey, yeah! He wanted more tomato drawings!" so yeah. He nodded his head in affirmation._

"_Then you're my best friend now!" Naruto proclaimed._

_If being best friend with the blond would mean more tomato drawings, then Sasuke was more than willing. Of course, he failed to realize that he could easily draw a tomato with just a red-colored circle with a little green dot on its top._

"_Oh, OK!"_

Thirteen years later, Sasuke Uchiha found himself regretting ever saying those two short words. If it was even possible, his already heightened glare turned even sharper.

He was really stupid and gullible back then that he wanted to vehemently deny that he had had such a conversation when he was a kid. Sasuke nearly shuddered. _Nearly_. Because he was angry.

Tightly grasping his poor smartphone—he made a mental note to buy a new one—he dialed Naruto's number. He wanted someone he could blame for everything that was happening to him then, and who better be his poor verbal punching bag but Naruto?

On the third ring, the blond idiot answered.

Not wasting any precious second of his life, Sasuke angrily asked, "What was that all about?"

"What, Bastard?" asked Naruto. He was oh-so-obviously feigning innocence.

Sasuke seethed and breathed in through his gritted teeth. "You _fucking_ brought me to that diner, left for the bathroom, _then never returned_. Next thing I knew—"

The dark-haired boy heard the blond laugh from the other end of the line. It was a laugh so obnoxious that Sasuke felt like a vein in his head popped. It was almost a minute later before Naruto had responded.

"It was just a date, Bastard! Nothing to get your panties in a twist."

The room temperature dropped into a scary negative integer. Anyone who would probably enter the young Uchiha's room—like his mother, who hastily closed the door and left that moment she was supposed to enter—would feel the cold biting into his skin. Sasuke's eyes were almost _lifeless_.

"You're going to pay for this," the Uchiha said.

Naruto chuckled. "_Riiight. _And Sakura-chan will know that you were the reason why all boys she liked avoided her—"

Sasuke felt a muscle in his cheek tick.

"—until Kiba, that is."

Naruto laughed further and Sasuke felt, for the first time, the negative temperature in his room. (Of course, if he had just checked the settings of his room's AC, then he would realize that the coldness was caused by a malfunction in his AC).

His mind was blank. It was a first, but that did not give enough reason to be so royally pissed off. Sasuke's thoughts wandered to a conversation with the idiot a few days before his unwanted date. The idiot was spouting nonsense about bro code rules (and some "amazing" bro-ness bro-hood) before Sasuke said he would _never_ (in his entire life) join the stupid bro-hood.

It was then that Sasuke realized why he landed on the unwanted date. He felt his breath hitch. He really, really, _really_ did not want to admit it, but despite being an idiot, Naruto was _clever_.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed and after breathing calming breaths into his system, he finally caved in.

"... I _thought_ bros don't set up other bros on blind dates," he mumbled, a red tint painting the tips of his ears.

Naruto was silent in the other end of the line. That was _not_ good.

Sasuke decided to take back what he said.

"Idio—"

"LEGEN... wait for it! ...DARY!" Naruto yelled and Sasuke's eyes hardened. "YES! HE FINALLY JOINED THE BRO-NESS!"

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

As Sasuke stared on the screen of his phone, mulled on his own idiocy and gullibility. _Fuck my life_, he thought.

* * *

"**And that, kids, is how your Uncle Naruto cornered me into joining his bro-hood."**

**notes **Review? :)  
**inspired by **How I Met Your Mother _and_ www. brocode. org.


	2. Sasuke decides that Naruto isn't happy

_**THE UCHIHA CHRONICLE: THE BRO CODE  
**__By finish line_

_xi._

"**A bro never lets his brokenhearted bro drink alone."**

For the most part of the twelve hours after Naruto had hastily announced that he was _finally_ part of his stupid bro-ness, all Sasuke could do was glare, glare, then glare some more. Like that short moment when he exited from the Uchiha household while silently mumbling his good-bye to his mother. He was about to hop into his car when he caught sight of pink.

He glared. (He had already been glaring, but he thought that there was nothing wrong with glaring some more. A thought at the back of Sasuke's mind told him that he was obsessing on glaring. He pushed that said thought aside.)

Sakura Haruno, his pink-haired, green-eyed neighbor (who he used to silently call "my pink fairy crush" in front of his older brother, Itachi—he shuddered at the memory), was sitting by their front porch, a thick textbook settled comfortably on her lap. His already narrowed eyes turned into a more even pair of slits at the sight of the book. He'd honestly bet that the book was at least four inches thick.

The textbook was lucky, Sasuke bitterly thought. It got to be held by Sakura. Hell, it got to sit on her _lap_. He _couldn't_ and—

Sasuke almost gagged and coughed up to cover his embarrassment. Wait. Uchihas _didn't_ get embarrassed. So he fixed himself and _glared_. _Just shut up, Sasuke_.

He entered his black Aston Martin with what could have been a very, _very_ dignified Uchiha pout and completely missed how his childhood "pink fairy crush" lifted her head from her text and shot him a very wary glance.

Sasuke arrived in Naruto's place less than half an hour later. The apartment the idiot was staying in was rather small, but big enough for one messy person like the blond. Usually, when the boredom in the Uchiha household got unbearable, or when there were no homework to turn in the next day at school, Sasuke would find himself in Naruto's messy but otherwise homely abode.

It was a month before high school graduation, and Sasuke was pretty certain that a whole lot of things were going to change soon, so he did not bother picking up misplaced items in Naruto's apartment as he made his way into the Idiot's living room. (He was a certified obsessive compulsive, so you could not really blame him.)

When he turned a corner and into the mentioned living room, Sasuke's mood dampened incredibly. He had vowed to stop glaring from that point onward, but circumstances seemed to call for his Special-Uchiha-Glare-Censored-for-the-Eyes-of-the-Kids™.

He was met with wide, incredulous pairs of eyes that turned into pairs of mocking and laughing eyes—a little too soon, much to Sasuke's irritation.

"Ooohh, and what does a great, _ah-maaa-zing_ Uchiha doing here?" Kiba Inuzuka inquired, a nasty grin spreading across his lips.

Sasuke looked up to the ceiling and told himself to calm down and fight the urge to punch the Inuzuka in the guts. He took heavy breaths and maintained coolness.

"Perhaps the same reason an idiot like you are in here," he retorted, taking a seat on one of Naruto's worn-out couches. Kiba spouted stuff that Sasuke hardly cared to listen on, so he looked around and noticed people he did not expect to be there. Like Neji Hyuuga. "What—"

"So you're saying that you yourself are an idiot?" asked Neji. A damnable smirk appeared on his face and Sasuke felt his right eye twitch.

Sasuke breathed in to compose himself and let an identical smirk grace his lips. "Only if _you_ agree that you _are_. You would not be here if Naruto hadn't called on the stupidity _in_ you for just one second."

He and the Hyuuga engaged in one-minute glaring contest, while the rest of the group bet on who would give up first. Said group consisted of Shikamaru Naru (_surprisingly_), Kiba, Gaara Subaku (_how the hell did the Idiot manage to get the insomniac into _this_?_), and Suigetsu Hozuki (_hah_).

"OK, kids, stop that. Daddy Naruto is here to save the day!"

All heads snapped toward the direction of the blond Idiot.

"Whaaaat?" asked Naruto incredulously. For the record, there was nothing orange in what he was wearing that day. He wore a simple black shirt and dark blue jeans with his notorious headphones sitting comfortably on his shoulders. "Calm down, little kids."

Naruto grinned, Sasuke glared, and the rest of them stared.

"Ha, Bastard!" Naruto pointed, laughing hysterically. The group stared as Naruto got to the point where he had to kneel and grip his sides from the full force of his laughter. "Your face! I haven't seen the Special-Uchiha-Pout-No-One-Should-See-_Ever_™"—everyone turned curiously to look at the dark-haired boy—"in a while!"

"He _is_ pouting!" both Kiba and Suigetsu pointed out. Similar grins were spreading out on their lips.

Even Gaara asked, "He _is_?"

Sasuke's eyes _flared_. "I am _not_!"

"He is," noted Shikamaru with an amused grin. Neji could only snicker.

Naruto stood up and fixed himself, signs of laughter still lingering in his eyes. "Actually, you should see his Special I'm-Sexy-and-You-Know-It-Stare™. It's even more hilarious."

All heads turned to look at the young Uchiha. Sasuke felt his cheek twitch.

"You seriously believe that Idiot?"

* * *

After almost an hour of bruising Sasuke's ego, Naruto finally gave them an overview of what their "Bro-ness" would be like. Of course, Sasuke was _not_ amused. He kept hearing stuff that should not be there in the first place.

Among the stupidest stuff that Sasuke had ever had the misfortune to hear included:

_-A bro does not put his hand on another bro's waist_.

"What the hell, Naruto?" Neji had asked.

Naruto shrugged. "Who knew? This is "Bro-ness", Neji! What if one of us happens to swing _that_ way?" As though it was the most obvious thing in the world, Naruto added, "That's why this part of the Bro-ness Code is called _Only-Boys_."

Several eyebrows rose up.

_-A bro never touches another bro's muscles. No matter how impressive._

"Naruto?" Gaara called out. If only he had eyebrows, he could have raised one.

Naruto looked at him as if he had grown another head, and really, for Sasuke, it was _Naruto_ who had grown one. "Dude! You know, my muscles _are_ impressive! But kids, don't dare touch them. Huh."

_-A bro cannot give another bro Teddy Bear.  
-Bros don't stop to smell flowers.  
-A bro does not keep photos of another bro in his wallet.  
-A bro doesn't listen to chick music... in front of other bros._

"Because admit it or not, Taylor Swift rocks!" Naruto announced, grinning widely.

Sasuke could only sigh. "Whatever, Naruto."

It went on. Sasuke would not admit it, but being there with a couple of his friends, it was... it was _refreshing_ somewhat. There were times when one of them would make comments that urged a little smirk off of Sasuke. There were times when Sasuke _almost_ laughed, and somehow, he understood why Naruto was doing this in the first place.

Soon, they would go on their separate ways. Sasuke, for one, would be attending a university different from theirs, having passed into one of the most prestigious universities in the country.

When the bro codes turned serious that even Suigetsu and Kiba had the nerve to look solemn, it was Shikamaru who asked, "_Naruto_. What's the problem?"

It was the first time in a while when Sasuke had seen that Naruto's smile did not quite reach his eyes.

* * *

Two days later, Sasuke found himself walking through the neighborhood, thinking about Naruto's reasons for bringing up his so-called "bro-hood". It was very rare when you get to see a very serious Naruto.

Sasuke was cut off from his brooding when he passed by an alley and saw Kiba being beaten. He honestly thought that it would be troublesome, but Sasuke still came to the boy's rescue. After all, if it continued, Kiba might see himself in a hospital with amputated arms—he did not even move a muscle to fight back.

"Hey!" Sasuke called out, making the three boys who were beating Kiba up stop from what they were doing. His Special-Uchiha-Glare-Censored-for-the-Eyes-of-the-Kids™ made the three boys still from what they were doing.

"It's an Uchiha!" hissed one of the boys. Sasuke recognized them as three of the people he and the other boys had to fight before.

One of them groaned before saying, "Of all times—just—let's go!"

Sasuke watched as they scurried off, cursing along the way. His black eyes turned to Kiba who was sprawled helplessly on the ground. Sasuke sighed and crouched beside the boy.

"Those idiots—you could easily beat them," he began. Kiba had his back turned to him, so Sasuke could not see the full extent of his injuries. Sasuke decided to make him look his way. "Why let them—"

Sasuke stopped. Kiba's face might have been swelling and black-and-blue, but no one could miss the fact that his eyes were glossed over; no one would miss the fact that Kiba was crying.

"Hey, Uchiha," began Kiba, looking up as he settled on his back. Sasuke stared at him, confused. "You know how I used to make fun of all those weak-willed wusses who looked as though their world just crashed? Those wusses whose girlfriends broke up with them?"

Sasuke did not know what to feel for what was coming.

"Hn."

Kiba laughed, and for Sasuke, that was the saddest laughter he had ever heard. "It's because I'm afraid to be one of them. I'm afraid to be called an ex-boyfriend. And now I am."

Sasuke's eyes widened, even by just a fraction.

"Sakura... she—" Kiba did not get to finish as he punched the wall next to him.

Later on after the sun had set and after getting Kiba all fixed up in a near clinic, Sasuke joined him for a drink. According to Naruto, _bros do not let broken-hearted bros drink alone_.

As he sat beside Kiba in the porch of the Inuzuka residence (Kiba's parents were still out) that night, Sasuke pondered on his childhood "pink fairy crush" neighbor. He liked Sakura—not romantically, _no!_

But he thought that she was smart and strong and witty and pretty—_OK_, that was waaaaay over the point. He liked to punch himself, however, because for some reason, he got a little happier of the news that Sakura had broken up with Kiba.

He liked the fact that Sakura was finally back in the market and he'd be damned if he did not do anything about it. Sakura had always been a constant in his life, but when she got together with Kiba almost a year ago, everything _changed_.

When she and Kiba got together, there were no more morning wake up calls or her coming over to have some girl moments with his mom. She was no longer nagging him into coming with her somewhere, and she was no longer willing to help him with schoolwork.

He kind of missed those. Kind of.

He took a large swig of alcohol if just to drown the fact that yes, maybe this time, he had the chance with her.

"**The long ride starts from here on."**

* * *

**notes **Hurriedly written. Sorry.


End file.
